Nothing Will Have Taken Place Except the Place

Public lecture by Tom McCarthy on the occasion of his presence at the Art Institute for the Seminar “Stop Terrorism!” by Ingo Niermann

• January 9, 2018, 5 pm, Tower Building, Studiokino (ground floor)

On the occasion of his presence as a guest at the Art Institute in Ingo Niermann’s seminar “Stop Terrorism!”, writer Tom McCarthy will give a public lecture titled “Nothing Will Have Taken Place Except the Place”.

Is the terrorist, as Don DeLillo claims, the writer’s double? Or, as Mallarmé might counter, are there no bombs except in poems? What does Auden mean when he claims that ‘Poetry makes nothing happen’? And – most importantly – where does sport fit into all of this?

Tom McCarthy is a writer and artist whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages. His first novel, Remainder, which deals with questions of trauma and repetition, won the 2008 Believer Book Award and was recently adapted for the cinema. His third, C, which explores the relationship between melancholia and technological media, was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize, as was his fourth, Satin Island, in 2015. McCarthy is also author of the 2006 non-fiction book Tintin and the Secret of Literature, an exploration of the themes and patterns of Hergé’s comic books; of the novel Men in Space, set in a Central Europe rapidly disintegrating after the collapse of communism; and, most recently, of Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish, a selection of his essays for publications such as The New York Times, The London Review of Books, Harper’s and Artforum. In 2010 he wrote the screenplay for Johan Grimonprez’s multiple award-winning film Double Take. In addition, he is founder and General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious avant-garde network of writers, philosophers and artists whose work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Palais de Tokyo Paris, Tate Britain and Moderna Museet Stockholm.